nature as space

NATURE AS SPACE
(re)UNDERSTANDING NATURE
AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS
Edited by
Güven Arif Sargın
Contributors
Mark Bassin
Emel Aközer
Rana Nergis Öğüt
Güven Arif Sargın
Jale Erzen
Ayşen Savaş
Raffaele Milani
f
m y
METU Faculty of Architecture
2000
To My Beloved Comrades
CONTENTS
EDITOR’S NOTE
INTRODUCTION: SOME THOUGHTS ON HOW TO READ
THE NATURAL AND THE SOCIAL
Mark Bassin
Section I: Re-conceptualizing Nature and the Natural
NATURE FROM WITHIN AND FROM WITHOUT
Emel Aközer
SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE CONCEPTION OF NATURE WITHIN
THE FRAMEWORK OF THE DIALECTIC OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Rana Nergis Öğüt
Section II: The Politics of Nature and the Nature of Environmental Politics
NATURE OF RESISTANCE AND COUNTER-HEGEMONY IN POSTSTRUCTURAL SOCIETY
Güven Arif Sargın
Section III: The Dichotomy of Nature: Cultural Paradigms of Nature in Art
NATURE, ITS AESTHETIC KNOWLEDGE AND ART
Jale Erzen
AGAINST NATURE: ATHROPY AND THE MUSEUM OF NATURAL
HISTORY
Ayşen Savaş
THE BIRTH OF THE AESTHETICS OF LANDSCAPE
Raffaele Milani
Section IV: The Nature of Urban and the Natural Rural
CONCLUDING NOTES
Güven Arif Sargın
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Editor’s Note
Despite recent scholarly endeavors to (re)understand nature and
natural environments, there remain a number of historically
abandoned issues and thus, a wide spectrum of politico-ideological
positions to overcome. In part, viewed from perspectives of critical
social theory, both the form and the content of contemporary
exertions deviate, as they tend to problematize their concerns within
frameworks of nature-culture dichotomy. What is peculiar about
these frameworks are the modes of questions that no longer solely
address the exclusion of nature and natural environments from
intellectual surveillance, but that reveal the procedure of social
construction of nature with special reference to different academic
domains, such as history, art, culture, politics, and others.
Parallel with these developments are such areas of interest that are
also now growing in design circles as powerful realms contributing
discursive linkages, both theoretical and spatial, between natural and
built environments. Schools of design have underestimated,
intentionally or otherwise, and sometimes even ignored proponents
of nature and/or natural environments in their curricula based on a
common rationale which asserts that the design production is a
distinctive process with which nature has limited if any impact. This
clear-cut distinction between built and natural environments has
subjected itself to serious criticisms, and there are now increasing
intentions and efforts to unite nature and the design artifact under one
roof. This book, in this sense, is a sincere attempt to open new paths
and to reconsider nature and natural environments not as separate
milieus but as dimensions that are integral to design discourses and
practices.
The editor wish to express his gratitude to Prof. Dr. Mark Bassin of
University College London for his review and introductory
contribution, Dr. Gül Sosay of TUSİAD, and Dr. Can Bayraktar of
Yeditepe University in İstanbul for their final reviews. Thanks also to
Fatih C. Öz for his cover design. Finally, we are also grateful to the
Faculty of Architecture at METU for their support in publication of
this book.
Güven Arif Sargın,
Ankara 2000
Section I:
Re-conceptualizing Nature and the Natural
Tormented by environmental catastrophe, the forms and the content
of such conceptions as nature, natural, landscape, earth, ecology,
green, and sustainability have been incorporated into new discursive
modes through which they in turn produce new literary means of
explaining social and cultural coding. This section is thus devoted to
a redefinition of these concepts in light of contemporary findings as
an attempt to provide better understandings of how, for what reason,
and to what extent they are produced, consumed, reproduced, and
made available to the public through institutions and the forces of
high and popular cultures, respectively.
Contributors
Emel Aközer
Nature from Within
and from Without
Rana Nergis Öğüt
Some
Reflections
on
the
Conception of Nature within
the Framework of the
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Section II:
The Politics of Nature and the Nature of Environmental Politics
Recent attempts to construct contextual histories of natural/cultural
environments have re-focused attention on the theories and the
proponents of social and cultural studies in design disciplines and
related fields. Such endeavors primarily derive their momentum from
their understandings of political forces that constantly engage in
shaping, and/or transforming natural environments into cultural ones,
or vice versa. This section includes the analyses of some of the forces
in the processes of production and/or re-production of natural/cultural
environments for identity, control, discipline, struggle and power. In
other words, the objective is to reveal elements in the political syntax
of those acts oriented towards physical and philosophical changes in
nature and built environments.
Contributor
Güven Arif Sargın
Nature
of
Resistance and CounterHegemony
in
PostStructural Society
Section III:
The Dichotomy of Nature: Cultural Paradigms of Nature in Art
Despite the resourcefulness of literature concerned with discourses of
nature and natural environments, it often remains inadequate in
defining the actors, ideas and modes of operations it seeks to address;
thus scholarly debates revolve around fabricated and distracting
dichotomies, in particular, with respect to art and aesthetics. We
observe such metaphoric polarization in topics concerning, for
example, tamed vs. untamed, local vs. trans-national, beautiful vs.
sublime, and so on. This section, therefore, aims to challenge these
socially constructed dichotomies—binary oppositions with special
reference to topos, civilized, uncivilized artizanal, artistic, placeless,
constricted, boundless, time-confined, timeless…
Contributors
Jale Erzen
Nature, Its Aesthetic
Knowledge and Art
Ayşen Savaş
Against
Nature:
Atrophy and the Museum of
Natural History
Raffaele Milani
The
Birth of the Aesthetics of
Landscape
Section IV:
The Nature of Urban and the Natural Rural
In many respects, distinctions between urban and rural are clear, yet
what is common to both ethos is the fact that they each define
particular landscapes in terms of their distinctive, natural/essential
characters. The physical interactions between the two not only dictate
peculiar transformations in spatial terms but also reveal socio-cultural
transformations, or, more precisely, transgressions with respect to
politics. This section seeks to both remind and broadly question
conceptualizations of urban and rural surroundings as being the
unconstrained habitats of nature and natural environments.
Contributor
Güven Arif Sargın
Concluding
Remarks
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
(In alphabetical order)
EMEL AKÖZER is Associate Professor of Architecture. Graduated from
METU in 1979 and received her Ph.D. in 1989 at the same institution.
Currently teaches Architectural Design and Theory. She is recently
conducting a research on the Architecture of Palliative Care in Turkey.
MARK BASSIN is Reader in Cultural and Political Geography at
University College London. Had visiting professorships at the University of
Chicago, Copenhagen University, and Pau University in France. His book,
Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in
the Russian Far East, 1840-1865 (Cambridge University Press) was
published in 1999.
JALE NEJDET ERZEN, painter (Art Center College of Design, Los
Angeles-1973) and art historian, is Professor of Art History and Aesthetics
at METU. Founded and edited the BOYUT Journal of Fine Arts (19801985), and is one of the founders and president of SANART Association,
holding international symposia on art since 1992. Exhibiting in Turkey and
abroad since 1973, and writes on Aesthetics, Ottoman Architecture and
Modern Art.
RAFFAELE MILANI teaches History of Aesthetics at the Philosophy
Department of the University of Bologna. His books include the Italian
translation of Etienne Souriau’s La corrispondance des arts (Alinea, Firenze
1988), Categorie estetiche (Pratiche, Parma 1991), Il Pittoresco (awarded
by the Hanbury Botanical Gardens International Price). His latest book, Il
fascino della paura. L’invenzione del Gotico dal Rococo al Trash (Guerini,
Milano 1998) will be published in June 2000.
RANA NERGİS ÖĞÜT graduated from METU in 1979 and received her
Ms. in Architecture in 1985. Completed her Ph.D. in 1995, entitled The
Autonomy of Art and the Problem of Aestheticism in Architecture. Currently
teaches Architectural Design and Architectural Critical Theory and
Sociological Context of Architectural Aesthetics at the same institution.
AYŞEN SAVAŞ is Assistant Professor of Architecture at METU. Received
her Ph.D. in History, Theory, and Criticism at MIT in 1994. Currently
coordinates the Graduate Program at METU, Department of Architecture,
and teaches Architectural Design and graduate level courses on
Representation.
And the editor,
GÜVEN ARİF SARGIN is Assistant Professor of Architecture at METU.
Received his Ph.D. in Environmental Studies at University of WisconsinMadison in 1996. He writes on Politics in Space and Environmental
Discourse, and currently teaches Architectural Design and graduate level
courses on Social Theory and Cultural Studies in Urban Architecture.